After downloading and extracting the tarball (see Install Via Tarball) you
will be able to invoke the CrateDB executable in the bin directory. The
excutable is named crate.

The simplest way to start a CrateDB instance is to invoke crate without
parameters. This will start the process in the foreground.

sh$ ./bin/crate

You can also start CrateDB in the background using the -d option. When
starting CrateDB in the background it is helpful to write the process ID into a
pid file so you can find out the process id easlily:

sh$ ./bin/crate -d -p ./crate.pid

To stop the process that is running in the background send the TERM or
INT signal to it.